Parrot Bebop Drone Has Big Camera, GPS for Aerial Action

Parrot, the company behind the popular AR Drone quadcopters, announced a new toy on Sunday: the Bebop drone. The big deal is video—the Bebop has a new full-HD camera that can shoot impressively detailed video, and when combined with the optional Skycontroller, the footage being shot can be viewed in real time on a phone, tablet, HDTV or virtual reality headset such as Oculus Rift for a drone’s eye view.

The new Parrot Bebop drone and optional Skycontroller.

Nathan Olivarez-Giles/The Wall Street Journal

We got a some hands on time with both the Bebop and Skycontroller at a press event Parrot held in San Francisco last week, and a trip Parrot made to our office as well.

The Bebop introduces a few key improvements over Parrot’s two previous drones in terms of the camera quality, software feature set and safety. The Bebop’s built-in camera is a 14-megapixel, 1080p, fish-eye shooter with a wide 180-degree field of view. Paired with Parrot’s software, the camera can pan, zoom and remain much more stable than previous generation drones as it shoots photos and video in flight. The Bebop has 8GB of flash storage on board, where all the imagery is stored.

The Parrot Bebop Drone, in flight.

Nathan Olivarez-Giles/The Wall Street Journal

There’s also built-in GPS that enables the Bebop to hover in place if ever you take your hands off the controls—whether your piloting the device with a smartphone or the Skycontroller. The GPS can also be used to send the Bebop on a pre-set flight pattern, or return home with the press of a button. Parrot also says the Bebop’s Wi-Fi capabilities are stronger than its predecessors. It features four MIMO Wi-Fi antennas that can run on the latest 802.11ac connections and either 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies.

If ever the Bebop’s propellers come in contact with anything, they automatically stop spinning. They’re also now made of a softer plastic to do much less damage with whatever they do come in contact with.

Nathan Olivarez-Giles/The Wall Street Journal

When paired with the Skycontroller, the Bebop can fly as much as 2-kilometers or 1.2 miles away from its pilot. Don’t fly too far though—the Bebop’s battery life is only about 12 minutes long. The Skycontroller features an HDMI port, which allows users to feed video out to a display or TV. And the Oculus Rift integration works now—we tried it—to offer a unique and immersive control experience.

The Bebop and Skycontroller will be sold in a bundle, and the Bebop will be sold solo as well. But Parrot isn’t saying how much anything will cost just yet but given all the improvements, we expect it to list for more than the second-generation AR Drone’s $300 price. Both devices are slated for release sometime in the fourth quarter of the year—right in time for the holiday shopping season.